---
title: "Multi-site configuration with a single SearchStax app"
date: "2025-09-08T12:21:00+00:00"
summary: "Configure multiple Drupal sites with a single SearchStax app, managing separate search indexes for each site. Step-by-step guide included."
image:
type: "page"
url: "/acquia-cloud-platform/multi-site-configuration-single-searchstax-app"
id: "010f4f09-2580-4054-bcfa-5cdb52d5cb8c"
---

Table of contents will be added

This guide describes how to configure multiple Drupal sites to use a single SearchStax app, with each site managing its own search index. This approach is recommended for scenarios such as managing separate development, staging, and production environments.

Prerequisites
-------------

*   Install the SearchStax module on all sites.
*   Create a SearchStax app before configuration.
*   Use Drupal Views for search results pages.
*   Ensure that the Server and All Index (also known as Parent Index) have the same name.
*   All sites must run the same major version of Drupal (such as 10.x or 11.x).
*   Evaluate the number of production sites that connect to a single SearchStax application. While SearchStax does not impose a hard limit on the number of connected sites, each SearchStax application must adhere to a limit of 20 requests per second. For details, visit [429, 401, and Other API Errors](https://support.searchstax.com/hc/en-us/articles/40464780222477-429-401-and-Other-API-Errors).
*   Use `curl` to clear indexed search data.
*   Establish an abbreviated naming convention for each site, for example: `SiteA_Dev`, `SiteB_Dev`, `SiteA_Test`, `SiteB_Test`.

Configuration process
---------------------

1.  ### Configure the first site
    
    1.  Log in to the Drupal site and navigate to **Configuration** > **Search and Metadata** > **Search API**.
    2.  Locate the SearchStax Server and click **Edit**.
        
    3.  Click **Advanced** and confirm that the **All index prefix** field is empty.
        
        ![srsx_advanced-expand](https://acquia.widen.net/content/cb520770-f0dc-4ebe-a2b0-0193abb28a7d/web/eae0e_srsx_advanced-expand.png?w=720&itok=WJgipBFB)
        
    4.  Click **Multi-site compatibility** and check the box for **Retrieve results for this site only**.
        
        ![srsx_multi-site-compatibility](https://acquia.widen.net/content/f5e23a78-a873-41a4-bf53-fa3e0b0cbd14/web/240e2_srsx_multi-site-compatibility.png?w=720&itok=rbi9TsLj)
        
    5.  Click **Save**.
2.  ### Configure the search index
    
    1.  On the SearchStax server page, find the **Search indexes** section and select your search index.
        
        ![srsx_search-indexes](https://acquia.widen.net/content/f2d30b88-cb00-4d6e-b9b2-305eadeb6f33/web/3c5c5_srsx_search-indexes.png?w=720&itok=okqxnTGZ)
        
    2.  If the index contains zero items, click **Index now**. Wait five minutes, then click the **Edit** tab. If all items are already indexed, proceed to the **Edit** tab.
        
        ![srsx_index-status](https://acquia.widen.net/content/d264bf42-e13a-405d-be36-a4e8392d7c54/web/562f4_srsx_index-status.png?w=480&itok=JnVEe_NQ)
        
    3.  Click **Solr specific index options** and expand the **Advanced** section.
        
        ![srsx_solr-index-options](https://acquia.widen.net/content/e611bae7-6bbb-4555-8716-69616c949d54/web/7feff_srsx_solr-index-options.png?w=720&itok=rktD1PqO)
        
    4.  In the **Index prefix** field, enter the site abbreviation determined in the prerequisites. Click **Save**.
    5.  Click **Rebuild tracking information** and **Confirm**.
    6.  Click **Index now** and wait five to ten minutes.
3.  ### Configure SearchStax settings
    
    1.  Go to **Configuration** > **Search and Metadata** > **SearchStax settings**.
    2.  Check the **Re-route searches through SearchStudio** and **Configure searches via SearchStudio** boxes.
    3.  Under the **Which Drupal search settings should be ignored?** section, uncheck all boxes.
        
        ![srsx_search-settings-ignored](https://acquia.widen.net/content/fb4cbaa7-adee-4d3d-85aa-cd3c4b0b4b62/web/c9670_srsx_search-settings-ignored.png?w=720&itok=OU8KJ2nx)
        
        Important
        
        Ensure that the **Parse mode and searched fields** option remains disabled for use with multiple Drupal views.
        
4.  ### Configure additional sites
    
    1.  Repeat all steps for each additional site to connect to the SearchStax app.
    2.  Use the correct site abbreviation in the **Index prefix** field for each site.
5.  ### Test Search Results
    
    Confirm that each site displays results only from that particular site.
    

Manage the All Index
--------------------

After completing the configuration process, your SearchStax app contains three indexes:

*   **All Index**: Contains Solr documents from both Site A and Site B.
*   **SiteA\_Dev Index**: Contains Solr documents only from Site A.
*   **SiteB\_Dev Index**: Contains Solr documents only from Site B.

If a third site (Site C) must show search results from both Site A and Site B, keep the All Index and connect it to Site C with SearchStax's read-only API endpoint. If Site C is not required, delete the All Index using the SearchStax API:

    curl -X POST \
     'https://searchcloud-{{region-identifier}}.searchstax.com/{{Number}}/{{Application-ID}}/update?commit=true' \
     -H 'Content-type:application/json' \
     -H 'Authorization: Token {{Token}}' \
     -d '{
       "delete": {
         "query": "index_id:{{All index machine name}}"
       }
     }'

Maintenance notes
-----------------

*   Clear and reindex content with the Drupal UI to clear all indexes in the SearchStax app.
*   To clear and reindex content for a single site, use the SearchStax Solr API with curl to delete the specific index. Reference the provided curl example in the documentation.
    
        curl -X POST \
          'https://searchcloud-{{region-identifier}}.searchstax.com/{{Number}}/{{Application-ID}}/update?commit=true' \
          -H 'Content-type:application/json' \
          -H 'Authorization: Token {{Token}}' \
          -d '{
            "delete": {
              "query": "index_id:{{Site Index Prefix}}{{All index machine name}}"
            }
          }'
    

Note

*   Review the technical limitations on the [Acquia Search powered by SearchStax Product Guide](/acquia-cloud-platform/acquia-search-powered-searchstax-product-guide#section-26-technical-service-limitations "Acquia Search powered by SearchStax Product Guide") page before you combine multiple sites per application. If these limitations apply, select an alternative solution.
    
*   Features such as synonyms, stopwords, boost, and Smart Answers are applied at the app level and affect all sites within the app.
*   SearchStax roles exist at the Account level. App-level permissions are planned for future releases.
*   The Auto Suggest endpoint returns only one term per query in current tests.